Ezra Klein

I feel like that's people who are used to drugs to treat acute conditions not being used to drugs to treat chronic conditions.

I want to talk about a possible social side effect, which is...

Our culture's expectations for what people's bodies should look like have been punishing for a long time, particularly punishing for women and girls.

I think we've interestingly been entering an era where they're increasingly punishing on boys and men.

And there's this whole thing of like male looks maxing and the guys in the Marvel movies are completely jacked now and on all kinds of things you probably shouldn't be taking.

And, you know, if you're obese or overweight and you're taking a GLP-1 to lose weight or to protect your cardiovascular system, you know, great.

But I think a lot of the cultural effect of them...

has come from celebrities and influencers who all of a sudden show up and are much thinner, at times skeletal now, in ways that when you have the body's natural hunger signals coming back at you, it's harder to do.

You know, there was like this big body positivity movement, and that was always going to be a very uphill climb in this country.

But how do you think about GLP-1s as possibly a pharmaceutical accelerator of fairly dangerous body expectations?

Because now it's like, well, if you want to look thinner, why not just go on a GLP-1?

Or at least the ones who are sensitive to it.

But I take your point on that.

But put that side of the debate over here.

That was always an effort that was running up against the mainstream of American culture, which believes very strongly in thinness as a synonym for virtue.

And, you know, one thing that the people I know are worried about and frankly that I'm worried about, I mean, I feel like I would not have had this concern for like young boys, which is what I have a while ago.

And now I look at the rise of male looks maxers and it looks a lot like toxic diet culture that girls were exposed to before.

And obviously, Clavicular, who is the avatar of that, has talked a lot about being on GLP-1s or some form of these drugs.

I wonder what it's going to do when it is just that much easier for people at the top of society to exert heretofore unknown levels of control over their bodies.

And when they're doing it with these like wild stacks of GLP-1s and peptides and, you know, pills to prevent hair loss and everything else, you know, constant Botox, like that filters down.